URTH |
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Nicholas=20Gevers?= <vermoulian@yahoo.com> Subject: (urth) The two Typhons Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 06:06:07 TYPHON AND PAS: A RECONCILIATION OF HISTORIES One problem that Wolfe’s twelve-volume Sun Cycle presents is that of reconciling the details of Typhon’s reign given by Severian in THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN with the vast technological achievement required to build the “Whorl” as described in THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN. Severian’s account is of an Urth sufficiently like his own later one that for a long time he cannot see any difference: the language, physical locations, and institutions are very similar, Nessus and Saltus only somewhat less run down, the technological level recognisable in many respects, although the trucks (?) or taluses working on Mount Typhon are entirely unfamiliar. How, then, could Typhon have mustered the technical and economic resources invested in the “Whorl”, resources clearly infinitely beyond those available to the Autarchs of one or two thousand years later? I suggest that the answer is apparent simply in the terms of the question itself. From URTH, we know a number of things about Typhon’s policies as a ruler, notably that his “assessors” collect a tax in human children, and that he is fond of huge prestige projects, such as Mount Typhon; we know he desires immortality. So it is easy to conceive of Severian’s Typhon wishing to build the “Whorl” and become its presiding god (Pas). And consider further: what would the effect on Urth have been of the construction of the “Whorl”, of the stripping away of so many of its people and “chems”, its technology, minerals, water? Answer: Urth would have become the ravaged, pillaged, denuded, and depopulated world inherited by the Autarchs. Typhon initially ruled a much richer and more advanced Urth, but asset-stripped it. In order that Silk’s Whorl could come to be, Severian’s impoverished Urth had to be created. A corollary: the Typhon Severian encounters in SWORD and in URTH is an abandoned version of the tyrant, left behind when Pas and his innumerable Cargo departed Urth. He is still Typhon, and still desires to rule, but lacks the continued means necessary, his immortal self having made off with the same. The experiment with two heads was never going to ensure immortality; digitization made far better sense, and the bicephalic ogre of Mount Typhon is a discarded prototype with a futile will of its own. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/